Art

Papier-mâché Pop Icons Are Here to Scare You

While these images might look like icons with botched surgeries, behind all that material are models that look nothing like the finished project – and that’s the point. Marie-Lou Desmeules, a French-Canadian artist, presents a series of human sculptures that intend on highlighting gender-norms, surgery frenzies, and general body issues that plague our society.

Using a process she fittingly describes as ‘surgery,’ Desmeules uses human models as a canvas and then applies a slew of mixed materials to morph the original image into a manipulation of pop culture icons like Karl Lagerfeld, Pamela Anderson, and Hulk Hogan. The end result is funny, but the kind of funny that gets under your nails with a certain ick factor. It sort of looks like Frankenstein has come to plastic life.

The message about the work is crystal and the way Desmeules manages to translate it makes one realize that gluing paper and paint to your face really isn’t that different from real plastic surgery. Is life in plastic really that fantastic?